TITP105 Group Report: Analyzing Threats of Social Media Platforms

This report, prepared for the TITP105 unit, provides an in-depth analysis of the various threats present on social media platforms. It explores critical issues such as identity theft, where attackers use stolen identities for criminal activities, and personal message theft, which involves the breach of confidential conversations due to vulnerabilities and hacking. The report also examines malware threats, detailing how malicious links and files spread through social media can lead to system compromise and data breaches. Furthermore, it addresses social media platform hijacking, where entire platforms are compromised, giving attackers access to user data. The report then offers crucial recommendations, including enhanced privacy settings, data protection prioritization, user awareness campaigns, strong password implementation, and the establishment of data standards to mitigate these risks. This report aims to provide IT professionals and social media users with the knowledge to secure their data and protect their privacy in the digital landscape.

Running head: THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Threats of Social Media
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Analysis of Social Media Threats:...................................................................................................2
Identity Theft:..............................................................................................................................3
Personal Message Theft:..............................................................................................................4
Malware Threats:.........................................................................................................................5
Social Media Platform Hijacking:...............................................................................................6
Recommendation Regarding Threat Analysis:................................................................................6
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................8
References:......................................................................................................................................9

2THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Introduction:
In the current generation, social media is one of the regular essentials for the peoples. It is
quite commonly used medium of interaction with the other peoples (Perrin 2015). The social
media can be considered as the interactive computer mediated technology which can be utilized
for facilitating the creation and sharing of the idea, information, interests and various of other
expressions through virtual networks and communities. Currently there are various of social
media platforms and there are millions of users worldwide for this social media users. All of the
popular social media platforms are currently operational through the online environment.
All of these social media platforms collects various of crucial information from the end of
their users (Sajid 2016). Thus, it is very much important that these crucial information are
protected in a proper way for ensuring the security and the data of the individual users. In many
of the cases it has been seen that these social media has faced various of security related issues
due to which the confidential data of the social media users have been breached. In this report a
proper IT consulting will be provided so that privacy and security of the data for the social media
can be ensured.
Analysis of Social Media Threats:
In the current aspects there are various of issues which are currently leading towards the
threats in the social media. The important threats which are related with the social media
platforms are the identity theft, theft of personal messages, malware threats and hijacking of the
social media platform (Chen 2015). These are the most common threats which occurs in the
social media. There are various of reasons due to which this type of threats occurs in the social
media platform. In the following section all of these security threats are described briefly.

3THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Identity Theft:
The identity theft is one of the common issue which occurs in the social media platforms.
The identity theft of the social media users can be considered as deliberate use of the identity of
someone else for performing some specific type of task. It is one of the common method of
gaining the financial advantages. The identity theft is done by the criminals for performing some
criminal activities while using identity of some other persons. In the social media platform all the
users uses their original identity for creating and using the social media platform (Kahn and
Liñares-Zegarra 2016). Thus, proper protection of this original identity is very much important
for protecting the social media users from the identity theft. There are various of reasons due to
which the identity theft occurs but in the social media platform the main issue due to which the
social media platform occurs is the data breach in the social media platforms. The main sources
of this type of data breach is the external hacking. Hacking is done by the attackers for getting
the access to the personal information of the social media users and this data can be used by the
attackers for performing any type of illegal activity. This leads to the factor of identity theft.
Also, lack of knowledge is another factor which leads to the identity theft issue (Holtfreter et al.
2015). There are many users who are not having proper knowledge of managing their data in the
social media platforms and due to this reason their personal information is getting theft easily by
the attackers which again leads to the identity thefts.
Improper standards for data is another reason due to which the issue of identity theft is
occurring. In many of the cases it has been assessed that there is no proper type of standard for
the protection of the data. In such type of cases it becomes very much easy for the attacker to
collect those data which can be utilized for the theft of the identity of the individual users. By the
identity theft the attackers can use the personal information of those users to access any type of

4THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
confidential information and can perform crimes for their own benefits. Thus, it is one of the
serious threats in the social media platform that need to be addressed in an adequate manner.
Personal Message Theft:
Most of the social media platforms provides personal conversation services. This type of
conversation is mainly done between two parties and it is totally confidential. While this type of
chat or conversation services is used by the social media users there are various of confidential
and crucial information is shared among them (Hancock 2016). These exchanged information
among them must always remain confidential. But it is not ensured that this conversation will
always remain confidential. There are various of cases where it has been seen that this type of
personal messages over the social media has been breached due to which both of the users faced
various type of problems. In this aspect it has been assessed that the main issues due to which the
personal messages are getting theft are the vulnerability in the security of the social media
platform and hacking of the individual user accounts.
In many of the cases it has been assessed that there is a vulnerability in the security
system of the social media platforms and due to this vulnerability factor attackers are gaining
easy access to the social media platform servers (Chen et al. 2018). As the hackers are getting
the access to the main servers to the social media it becomes very much easy for them to extract
any kind of data from there. In this way the attackers are gaining the access of the personal
conversation of the individual users of the social media. Not only fault in the social media
security mechanisms leads to this kind of situation. With that fault of the social media users also
leads to this kind of situation. In many of the cases it has been assessed that the users of the
social media are using a very common password or a simple password for protecting their social
media account. This passwords are having quite low level of security and is easily guessed by the

5THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
attackers. In this way the attackers get access to the social media accounts of the individual users
without providing much effort due to the fault of the users and ultimately it leads to the personal
message theft threat. In this aspect there is another way which is utilized by the attackers for the
hacking purpose of the individual social accounts. Here, phishing is used by the attackers for
gaining the login id and the passwords of the individual users (Alsharnouby, Alaca and Chiasson
2015). In this case the hackers creates exactly same fake login page with the targeted social
media and send the URL of this fake login page to the victim. By clicking on this URL the
victims goes to the fake page and login to the social media account. In the attempt of the login
process through this fake web page the victims actually provides their login id and the password
to the attacker and this factor also leads to the theft of the personal messages. Spotting this type
of phishing webpages is very much easy but most of the users fails to spot the phishing pages
due to lack of proper awareness.
Malware Threats:
Malware threats is one of the crucial threats which occurs in this context of social media
issues. Threats regarding the malware actually targets the system on which the users might
operating his/her social media account (Sharmeen et al. 2018). In the worst case of the malware
attack the attacker might gain full access to the system of the attackers. Social media platforms
plays an important role regarding this malware attack. Attackers use the social media platform
very cleverly for spreading the malware or for targeting any specific type of victim. Here the
attackers uses the social media platform to post the link to the malware and they design their post
with something very much attractive. When the users click on the posted link it takes them to
some external website which consists the malware. In this way the users got affected by the
malware which can steal the crucial information directly from their devices (Milosevic,

6THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Regazzoni and Malek 2017). With stealing of the data it can also lead to total hijack of the
victim’s system. In such type of cases the hacker gets full access to the system of the victim
which leads to browsing of all the confidential information of the victim. In this way the
confidential information of the users are hacked. In the cases of individual attack the attacker
sends the malicious link directly to the victim as personal message through the social media. In
this way the hackers execute malware through the social media.
Social Media Platform Hijacking:
Social media platform hijacking is one of the serious issue which occurs due to the
vulnerability in the social media platform. In such type of cases the whole infrastructure of the
social media gets hacked by the attacker and each and every operations of the social media
comes under the control of the attacker (Babko-Malaya et al. 2017). In this way it becomes very
much easy for the hackers to access the confidential information resides in the individual social
media accounts. In this way the attacker gets access to important and confidential data of the
social media users. In this aspects the social media platform hijacking not only exposes crucial
data regarding their accounts, but also it provides full access of the individual accounts to the
attackers. Thus, it is one of the biggest threat in the aspect of social media usage.
Recommendation Regarding Threat Analysis:
There are various of threats which are related with the social media platform which has
been analysed in the above section. In this aspect it is very much important to mitigate this type
of security issues in a proper way so that privacy and the security of the important data of the
social media users can be ensured. In this aspect, for proper neutralization of these threats it is
very much important to proper follow some of the crucial steps. In the following section of this
report crucial recommendations are described for mitigation of the assessed threats.

7THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
 Initially it is very much important that all the users of social media is having increased
privacy setting. All of the social media platform provides a level of privacy. Thus it is
recommended to the social media users to max out their privacy setting for avoiding this
type of situations.
 Data beach is one of the crucial issue due to which occurs in the social media platform.
To stop this type of data breaches it is recommended to prioritize the protection of the
data.
 Lack of knowledge of the social media users is one of the biggest issue due to which
identity theft occurs. Thus it is recommended to create proper awareness among the users
of the social media so that they will be able to manage their own data and spot the
phishing pages.
 Weak passwords is also a reason of social media threats. Thus it is recommended to
always implement a strong and unique password.
 Proper data standard also need to be implemented for the mitigation of social media
threats that has been identified in this report.
 In the case of malware threats it is recommended to implement a proper antivirus system
which will be protecting the system from this kind of attack and it is also recommend to
social media users not to open any type of external links until it is verified by the social
media itself.
 Proper audit in periodic manner of the security system of the social media also
recommended so that any type of vulnerability can be detected and the social media
platform can be saved from the hijacking.

8THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Conclusion:
The above section implies that social media threats is one of the biggest concern in the
aspect of privacy and security of the individual user’s data. It has been assessed that these threats
can be very much destructive for the social media users and for this reason it is important to
properly mitigate this type of threats. In this reports there are various of type of threats which has
been identified and all of these threats has been analysed briefly. The main threats which has
been analysed in this report are the identity theft, personal message theft, malware related threats
and the threat of social media hijacking. From the analysis the main reasons due to which this
type of threats occurs has been identified. It has been assessed that there is errors from both the
side of social media platforms and form the users due to which this type of threats are occurring.
This report has also identified the actual steps for the mitigation of the identified threats which
has been discussed in the recommendation section. Proper recommendations has been shared so
that all the identified threats can be mitigated in an appropriate way without creating any type of
further damage.

9THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
References:
Alsharnouby, M., Alaca, F. and Chiasson, S., 2015. Why phishing still works: User strategies for
combating phishing attacks. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 82, pp.69-82.
Babko-Malaya, O., Cathey, R., Hinton, S., Maimon, D. and Gladkova, T., 2017, December.
Detection of hacking behaviors and communication patterns on social media. In 2017 IEEE
International Conference on Big Data (Big Data) (pp. 4636-4641). IEEE.
Chen, G.M., 2015. Losing face on social media: Threats to positive face lead to an indirect effect
on retaliatory aggression through negative affect. Communication Research, 42(6), pp.819-838.
Chen, Y., Li, Y., Lu, L., Lin, Y.H., Vijayakumar, H., Wang, Z. and Ou, X., 2018, February.
Instaguard: Instantly deployable hot-patches for vulnerable system programs on android. In 2018
Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS'18).
Hancock, R., 2016. Misuse of Company Time: How the Internet and Social Media are Creating a
New Time Theft.
Holtfreter, K., Reisig, M.D., Pratt, T.C. and Holtfreter, R.E., 2015. Risky remote purchasing and
identity theft victimization among older Internet users. Psychology, Crime & Law, 21(7), pp.681-
698.
Kahn, C.M. and Liñares-Zegarra, J.M., 2016. Identity theft and consumer payment choice: Does
security really matter?. Journal of Financial Services Research, 50(1), pp.121-159.
Milosevic, J., Regazzoni, F. and Malek, M., 2017. Malware threats and solutions for trustworthy
mobile systems design. In Hardware Security and Trust (pp. 149-167). Springer, Cham.
Perrin, A., 2015. Social media usage: 2005-2015.

10THREATS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Sajid, S.I., 2016. Social media and its role in marketing.
Sharmeen, S., Huda, S., Abawajy, J.H., Ismail, W.N. and Hassan, M.M., 2018. Malware threats
and detection for industrial mobile-IoT networks. IEEE access, 6, pp.15941-15957.